Microsoft has added a new a new premium Office 365 Enterprise suite plan– E5. It will deliver the most comprehensive set of productivity, collaboration, analytics, security and compliance capabilities of any Office 365 plan. Also, Microsoft has added new feature value in E1 and E3 with Skype Meeting Broadcast added into E1, and DLP and Encryption extended across workloads (SfB and SPO) for E3.

What is E5?

The new advanced feature value of security, analytics and new cloud voice and PSTN conferencing capabilities has been reserved for E5. Let’s briefly breakdown the features below. For a more detailed look at E5 and all of the new aspects of the Enterprise plans, contact us here.

Many clients, especially those with Enterprise Agreements, are being asked by Microsoft to convert their licensing agreements into Office 365 based subscription solutions and are confused by their options. This comparison is for clients who currently own just the Core CAL (client access license) and are considering moving to an Office 365 E1 plan with a Bridge CAL.

Let’s start with what is the same.

Both E1 and the Core CAL give you the right to run Exchange Standard CAL, Skype for Business Standard CAL (formerly known as Lync), and SharePoint Standard CAL on premise, in your own data center for your users. Both plans would require the requisite Server licenses purchases.

The Bridge CAL completes the traditional functionality of the Core CAL by licensing you for a Windows CAL, System Center Configuration Manager CML, and the Microsoft EndPoint Protection Antivirus service.

To say that Office 365 gives you plenty of options, would be an understatement. In today’s blog we’ll take a look at what options are available for Businesses and what some of the differences are. First, let’s take a look at what options you have:

Can you mix and match the options? The short answer is yes, however, for the best answer possible give us a call and we can talk you through what options make the most sense and why. For examples, some users can even take advantage of a light weight account called a Kiosk plan which could be even cheaper.

Are there differences in support?

Yes, a key difference in the plans centers around 24/7 Support. The Enterprise plans cover all issues; however, the Business plans only cover: Critical Issues.

Let’s take a look at how Microsoft defines critical issues. Only your organization can decide if not having phone coverage is worth it or not for high level issues. That single user could be the owner / CEO.

Severity Level

Operations and Support Description

Examples

Sev A (Critical)

One or more services aren’t accessible or are unusable. Production, operations, or deployment deadlines are severely affected, or there will be a severe impact on production or profitability. Multiple users or services are affected.

Yes, the version of Office in the business plans does not include Access or some of the pre-installed components to make items like data loss prevention and rights management work.

I have terminal server in my environment, does that matter?

Enterprise Plans support a terminal server environment whereas the Business plans do not support a terminal services environment.

Are there any hidden gotchas?

Hybrid configurations and On-Premises are supported in the Enterprise plans only. Business plans do not support either the hybrid or On-Premise options. So, users of the Business plans would only be allowed to deploy the technology in the cloud.

Keep these differences in mind as you plan out your cloud strategy and what plans make the most sense for your company. For a more comprehensive listing of additional support offerings that are offered with the Business Plans please see the link here. Or drop us a line to discuss your options!

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